Simon Burton was born in Yorkshire, England in 1973 and received a first class Bachelors Degree at the University of Brighton in 1995, before completing his MA in 1997 at the Royal College of Art. Described by Lucian Freud in 1997 as, “the most promising young artist in Britain today,” Burton received the Birtle prize for painting (1995), a travel award to ARCO studios in Lisbon, Portugal (1996), The John Minton Travel award (1996), The Jenny Hall Scholarship (1996) and worked in the U.S.A under the patronage of Robert and Susan Kasen-Summer (1997–98).